After the recent launch of Bittorent Sync and the Bittorent Bleep, Bittorent Inc. is reportedly working on a distributed web browser called Maelstrom.
The project that aims to "power a new way for web content to be published, accessed and consumed" is in alpha and only accessible with an invite.
While very interesting, this project raises many questions. How is this "distributed web browser" made? Is the DNS lookup distributed among users too? Is this going to become a new protocol and is it going to be open?
Sadly, if you're not on the alpha there's not much you can deduce from the little blurb on their blog.
Is anyone on Soylent News on the alpha yet? Anyone tried to do a bit of tinkering to see how it works?
The full announcement available here. Additional coverage can be found here and here.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @12:08AM
I just signed up as an alpha tester. We'll see if I'm one of the chosen few, and if so what the bits have in store via Maelstrom.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by doublerot13 on Friday December 12 2014, @12:32AM
Everything Bittorrent does is proprietary.
I don't think we need the net to be any less open.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday December 12 2014, @01:43AM
According to the comments, it's also not OS-agnostic — I can't find any pages saying which are included, but Linux isn't one of them as of the alpha release.
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Friday December 12 2014, @01:50AM
Their software is proprietary, but the protocol isn't.
The DHT technology would be a great way to bypass all this search engine take-down orders and domain name seizing, but
other than that, I'm hard pressed to see how it would work.
In other news, some of the original Skype guys are getting the band back together [morningledger.com] (somewhat). But they seem to be wasting their talent on Yet Another Messaging App.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @06:55AM
Sounds like you are proposing Freenet. Its 14 years old and still active. Just use FProxy: run freenet, and point your browser at it and you get a nice DHT based world wide web in all its censor resistance distributed HTML glory. I haven't used it, but it defiantly already exists.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 12 2014, @07:01AM
defiantly already exists.
Its been giving the authorities the finger for years!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Saturday December 13 2014, @12:00AM
Its been giving the authorities the finger for years!
veeeeeeeery slowly.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @02:11AM
GPL or GTFO [fossforce.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @09:13AM
The protocol is what matters you dunkass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @02:26PM
BitTorrent the company only distributed binaries - no sources - and only for Mac OS X and Windows.
Their original python code is no longer found on the bittorrent.com site.
Yet last time I looked they still had a sourceforge account, that linked to bittorrent.com.
Their account should be closed for TOS violation.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Friday December 12 2014, @01:14AM
How is this "distributed web browser" made?
I don't know. Maybe something like Freenet? (A little-known fact: in Polish, the same word means both "free" and "slow". Which makes me suspect that there's a team of Polish developers on the Freenet project.)
Is this going to become a new protocol and is it going to be open?
If it's not open, it won't ever get off the ground. So I'm assuming yes.
(Score: 1) by jbruchon on Friday December 12 2014, @01:23AM
From what I've heard it's just a browser with BitTorrent integration features (i.e. video streaming) hacked into it somehow. I'm working on something like Freenet but I'm keeping quiet on the details until I get it all figured out and have non-vapor code to show for it.
I'm just here to listen to the latest song about butts.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 12 2014, @05:55AM
A little-known fact: in Polish, the same word means both "free" and "slow"
Not really: https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#pl/en/powolne%20wolne [google.com]
powolne = slow
wolne = free
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by M. Baranczak on Friday December 12 2014, @02:33PM
Son, I've been speaking Polish since birth. Please don't use Google fucking Translate to lecture me.
"Powolne" means "slow".
"Wolne" means either "slow" or "free".
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday December 12 2014, @04:03PM
I've been speaking Polish since birth
Wow! Why haven't I heard about you yet? You're quite unique if this is true.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:59AM
Wow! Why haven't I heard about you yet?
I'm world-famous in Poland.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Sunday December 14 2014, @11:02PM
Just keepin' it real, yo!
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Friday December 12 2014, @09:55AM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @02:18AM
Will one still have DMCA takedown requests for a website that has distributed servers?
I expect it will. The BitTorrent company (as opposed to the BitTorrent protocol) is in tight with the MAFIAA. I don't think it would bite the movie studios that feed it.
(Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Friday December 12 2014, @06:56AM
Not sure if this will be the right tech but distributed DNS would be very useful
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @12:33PM
Like some other of their ventures this will most likely remain closed source, and thus ultimately worthless.
(Score: 1) by idetuxs on Saturday December 13 2014, @08:10AM
I signed for the alpha tester of Bittorrent Bleep some time ago, later a mail came in and said I could try it. The release was only available to Windows. WTF, I don't use Windows I thought, why they didn't specify it before?
Just checked their web page and still only available to Windows. That's so odd, an educated guess would be that a huge cap of the torrent (or related torrent programs) market reside on Linux users.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @07:56PM
Some folks have run the Windoze port of Firefox via WINE in order to get Silverlight working, in turn to get Netflix running.
There's one guy I know of who has made very sure his app is always WINE-compatible and has for over a decade. [google.com]
In the process, his app became the industry standard.
-- gewg_